


Secrets Were Made to be Told

by Its_not_tentacle_porn_shut_up_Joscelin



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Future Fic, Gen, Neal and Sara have a child, Neal has a kid, Neal works at the Louvre, Not Happily Ever After, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Neal Caffrey/Sara Ellis - Freeform, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series Finale, i mean it's not really canon divergence if it's post canon but whatever, this author knows nothing about art im sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 08:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21473326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Its_not_tentacle_porn_shut_up_Joscelin/pseuds/Its_not_tentacle_porn_shut_up_Joscelin
Summary: The last time Sara Ellis talked to Neal Caffrey they'd talked about how in another life they'd have little "baton wielding con children" and raise them in Westchester. It's a silly dream both knew would never happen, and they were okay with that.But a month after she leaves for London, Sara realizes she's pregnant, and there's only one possible father. She tells herself that she's just waiting until Neal's sentence is up to tell him, its only two more years. Then Neal dies, and the secret never get's told. Nearly two decades later a nineteen year old shows up in 'Nathan Odair's apartment in Paris and unknowingly sets off a chain of events that leads to more than one well kept secret being brought to light, including the truth about Neal's supposed demise.
Relationships: Neal Caffrey/Sara Ellis
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	1. Nothing Lasts Forever

Neal had been working, legally even (if one ignores the fact that he, legally, had been dead for going on two decades and forged the documents claiming him to be an immigrated British citizen with a permit to live and work in Paris, and the forged documents certifying him as a trained art historian and the- well okay Neal’s very existence was constantly swamped in illegalities but the point was he’d actually interviewed for the job and actually worked to keep it), at the Louvre in Paris for seven years. It had been longer than the time he spent working with Peter, longer than he’d been in jail; he’d actually begun to build a real life here. Had gotten so used to the name Nate Odair it was as much his own as Neal Caffrey (it was only when he was very very deep into a bottle of wine that he ever admitted that he liked it, liked the idea of living an honest life with honest friends and the same order of coffee in the same coffee shop with the same people every day), of course this meant that everything was about to get turned upside down because the universe had a bit of a thing about the words ‘Neal Caffrey’ and ‘peaceful’ being used in the same sentence. 

Don’t get him wrong, of course, the nights he wasn’t staying up because of work or a hot date (he learned a long time ago to never go on a third date, he was a dead man with a past that could crop up any minute, no matter how long it had been, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying all that Paris had to offer when he felt like it) he was staying up painting perfect replicas of the pieces he handled by day, and challenging himself to plan heists on the newest and strongest security systems even if those plans were never realized and paintings (usually) never sold. It was enough for him, really, to paint and plan and dream. He wasn’t living one double sided scheme to the next any more, wasn’t pushing his luck with half baked plans and impossible escape routes - he kept (most of) his side business as an artist to original works sold in small local galleries. 

And that’s why the world once again tilted on its access a cloudy Tuesday in June, because it had been seven quiet years too long and eventually the past comes back to remind you of who you are regardless of the name and papers you hide behind. 

* * *

“Please tell me you’re Neal Caffrey, because otherwise I’ve been waiting in the wrong apartment drinking the wrong stranger’s wine for the better part of the afternoon.” The voice of a young man greeted Neal when he opened the door to his apartment, and made him wish he’d still been in the habit of keeping a baseball bat in the umbrella stand by the door. 

“Neal Caffrey died tragically seventeen years ago.” Clearly the kid, because he really was a kid no older than his early twenties, sitting at his table and, indeed, drinking a glass of some of his best wine, knew who he was and there wasn’t much point trying to deny it now. 

“Yeah that’s what the file said, that’s what everyone says, really, but we both know it’s bullshit,” The kid turned around and Neal had the second shock of the afternoon in the same minute because it was like looking at a picture of himself from his early New York days but with red hair, which was really fucking weird to say the least, “Because clearly you’re standing right in front of me.” 

Neal couldn’t even come up with an answer to that because  _ standing in front of him was someone who literally looked like a younger, ginger clone of himself calling him by his real name like it was nothing more groundbreaking than the weather.  _ It was sheer luck and muscle memory that had him closing the door behind him when he stepped the rest of the way into the apartment. Who was this person? Where did he come from? How did he find him?  _ How did he get into his apartment without anyone noticing or his alarm going off?  _ Neal wanted answers, but he wasn’t sure he could even begin to ask any of the right questions. 

“How did you get in here?” Alright, good start, he thought to himself. Not the best but he was admittedly out of practice in the whole dealing with breaking and enterings department. 

“Your alarm is hackable with the right equipment and patience, your neighbors don’t question someone with a tool box and a jumpsuit declaring they work for the complex’s maintenance company, and front door has a very pickable lock. Really, you should fix that, considering the amount of forgeries you keep behind the false wall in your closet -- would be very easy to get in a lot of trouble with those, or even just out what? Several million including the half finished Rembrandt? Assuming you were planning on doing something about using a type of canvas that hadn’t been invented yet when the original was made that is.” Clearly, the kid had skill. And a good eye, the canvas thing with the Rembrandt was something even most professionals wouldn’t have picked up on without some very high tech fiber analysis. 

“Okay. Why? You obviously aren’t interested in the forgeries I have, and could have gotten in and out of here without a trace if you’re as skilled as you say you are -- what do you want?” It was very worrying, actually, that the kid seemed to be a competent, if not likely experienced, thief of the art variety. Ignoring the uncanny resemblance for a moment, it meant he probably wanted a forgery done for a con he was running, something that was high profile enough to warrant looking for a dead man. Neal had gotten out of the business of being under other people’s thumbs or at their mercy, but right now this stranger seemed to be holding all of the most important cards. 

“Oh what I want is very simple, you see, I’ve been trying to find you for the better part of four years. Tracking your first year as a ghost was the hardest, you know, trying to find a lead where even the FBI couldn’t? Very hard indeed. But you slipped up for the first time after only six months. A security camera outside a cafe in Monaco, you showed your face on a piece of footage that just happened to be being monitored by MI6 for an entirely different investigation. Of course, if I hadn’t had a very handy little program running inside MI6’s international surveillance software I wouldn’t have caught it but after I had a confirmed location on you once, it wasn’t too complicated to follow you after that. Let’s see, next was Greece, wasn’t it? Then a whole host of different places around Italy before you stayed in Rome for a few months, lost you for nearly a year and a half after that but you popped up again in Los Angeles of all places, very risky going back to the States especially that soon, three and a half years isn’t all that long after all. But regardless, next you made your way down further South and into the Caribbean for a while and then eventually you wound up here, France. And after that, you just kept coming back. I don’t know what it is about Paris other than the Louvre, but you just couldn’t stay away for too long. And in ‘26,” he paused here, setting down the glass of wine and leaning against the table, his expression soft and curious, not harsh or judgmental just like his words. Sure, there was only so much that could sound like you weren’t evil or obsessive when you’re recounting how you tracked someone’s life for a decade, but damn if the kid wasn’t doing it. Neal, of course, was somewhat disturbed and slightly embarrassed though he’d never admit it aloud, that a kid who couldn’t have been out of middle school when most of these things had actually happened had managed to pin him down so easily. It was almost insulting, how easy he made it sound. 

“You settled down for good. Sure, you change apartments every one or two years, but it’s the same area, same name, same job, same  _ life _ . Then, it was just a matter of actually meeting you. So,” he pushed away from the table then, walked calmly and deliberately towards Neal, and held out a hand, “M’name’s Kit, nice to meet ya.” 

“You still haven’t told me why,” Neal stared at the offered hand, not moving to grasp it quiet yet, “Only how. So,  _ Kit, _ why go through all that trouble to find a retired con the world thinks is dead anyways?” 

Kit smiled, lowered his hand, and finally, finally told Neal why. 

“Oh, I wasn’t trying to find a retired con, or a forger, or a thief. I was trying to find my father, and after nineteen years of not knowing him -- we’ve finally just met.” 


	2. Comparing Notes

To say Neal was expecting that response would be a lie, but even he had to admit that in the back of his mind, once he’d seen the kid’s face, he’d been doing the math trying to figure out who he’d been seeing around the time of the-  _ Kit _ , his name was Kit - around the time of  _ Kit’s  _ birth. And, given that the kid had just said he was nineteen that meant it was sometime in 2013-14, and narrowed it down to either a one night stand or - 

“Sara Ellis was a wonderful mother, if not absolutely terrifying when she wanted to be. I don’t know how much you keep up with the lives of people you knew, or with her, but four years ago sh-” Neal interrupted, thankful that he already knew what Kit was about to say, otherwise he wasn’t sure if his heart could have taken another bombshell of information like that this afternoon. Didn’t make it any less terrible, but at least it was something he already knew, had already cried and screamed and grieved over. 

“She died, I know. I try not to keep much of an eye on anyone, it’s too tempting to go see them, but I heard about it when she died. I remember reading that she had a son, but I never even thought…” Neal didn’t know what to say after that, he never considered that Sara’s child could have also been his own. The obituary hadn’t mentioned an age, merely a name, Christopher. Neal wondered what made the boy choose Kit, of all the possible shortenings of Christopher in the world, but was still too lost in the shock of the fact that  _ he had a son  _ to really put much thought into the passing question. Too shocked to do much of anything really, just listen and wish he was sitting down not still standing in his entryway like an idiot. 

“Yeah,” Kit seemed to have lost some of his steam as well now, or maybe that’s just what happens when you’re telling your clueless father about your mother’s death, Neal thought somewhat hysterically, it wasn’t like he’d ever done that though he certainly had a similar enough conversation once. “Well! The rest of this conversation really deserves a bottle of your, admittedly very fine, wine to go with it so -- living room? You grab the bottle I’ll get the glasses?” 

It was an olive branch, a hope that they could actually make something out of a first meeting that involved the hacking of at least one government database and a fair amount of B&E, but Neal Caffrey didn’t have his own section in Crime and Justice textbooks for nothing. So he nodded, picked out one of his better bottles, and tried not to think about how much it reminded him of the days when Mozzie would surprise him by being sat on the sofa at June’s, halfway through one of his favorite wines, and waiting for Neal to come home after a day of working with Peter at the office. 

“How’d you even know I was alive?” Neal broke the silence that had settled around the cluttered living room of his apartment, finally clear headed enough to start wondering about the boy in front of him beyond  _ ohmygodwhat _ , “I mean, I left enough clues for maybe Mozzie or Peter to figure it out eventually, but they’ve never tried to find me as far as I know, and I know they wouldn’t have told Sara unless they were sure.” 

Kit shrugged, “I didn’t,” he caught Neal’s gaze, “Like I said, I started looking for you four years ago, not long after mom died. It had always just been the two of us, and after she died I was left to the care of the state. It wasn’t bad, I went to boarding school for most of the year anyways and I got everything when she died so I could afford to keep going -- but it was lonely. I was fifteen and the closest thing I had to family was my cat and the members of a shitty punk band I was in that broke up a year later anyways. Mom told me all sorts of stories about you when I was a kid, and in her will left me a letter that told me if I ever wanted to learn more that I should find Peter Burke or your friend Mozzie. I ended up emailing Director Burke, pretending to be a student studying some of your cases, because,” Kit faltered, “Well at the time I really just didn’t want to deal with some stranger’s pity for the kid with two dead parents. I think it scared me to admit that I really was entirely alone, I started looking for you because the way my mom talked about you, even about your death when I was old enough to hear it, just made me feel like you were too clever to die that easy. I think that somewhere deep down she knew that too. 

But when I actually started digging into it, into  _ you _ , I started to think maybe it wasn’t entirely insane to think that you were alive somewhere living it up as a free man. So, when Director Burke emailed me back, I did the incredibly stupid thing and embedded a virus in my response.” 

“You  _ what?! _ ” Neal agreed, emailing a virus to the director of white collar crime in the FBI was an incredibly stupid thing to do. “How the hell didn’t you get caught?” 

“I went to one of the top boarding schools in Britain, it wasn’t hard to find a boy there who had both the contacts and the bitcoin to get a very, very high quality virus written that would activate when an email is opened, copy any file on the computer containing the keywords “Neal” or “Caffrey”, and then transfer the files back to originating email address upon the response. Seeing as it piggybacked off of an email he was already sending, his computer’s software didn’t see anything wrong with the transfer of information. Couldn’t tell you how the rest of it worked, as much as I have no problem utilizing computers and viruses, I’ve only got a basic understanding of how it all works. Regardless, it was successful, and I soon had enough evidence from your death to at least start putting the pieces together myself. No idea if Burke ever figured it out, he was smart enough not to make it easily findable on his computer if he did. By the end of that year I had started trying to figure out where you went, which as I said, wasn’t easy. 

I ended up realizing that if I kept spending my inheritance on what I needed to do to find you, I wouldn’t end well. But being in school at a boarding school isn’t exactly a great place to be when you’re looking for legal income that can fund a very, very illegal search for a dead con man. But it is a great place to hone the skill of conning rich assholes out of their money.” Kit was blushing now, clearly embarrassed to have just admitted to funding his search for Neal through cons against his classmates. But Neal couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled out of him,  _ of course _ his son would fund the search for him with the very thing that got Neal in trouble in the first place, and the one thing he loved doing almost as much as painting. 

“What kind of cons did you pull?” Neal was curious, partly because he wanted to know if his son was as clever as he seemed, but also to know if there was any way he would be in danger of falling as hard as Neal had when he’d gotten caught by Peter. Cons, while hardly something Neal could disapprove of without being the biggest hypocrite in the universe, held the potential for a lot of danger and consequences. 

“Mostly? Faking expensive liquor. Contraband was already something that paid well if you sold it to the right person and made sure to keep the market small by setting up the other kids smuggling stuff in for failure now and again, but the thing about rich snobs is that they love the idea that they’re somehow better than the other rich snobs. So it was really just a matter of getting empty bottles of the most expensive liquors I could find, filling them with dirt cheap shit, and making it seem like they’d never been opened or out of their original packaging. It’s not like any of us sixteen and seventeen year olds had ever had the chance to develop a palate for the world’s most expensive vodka and brandy anyways. Half the time I didn’t even have to go through the trouble of finding a bottle, just forging the label on something cheaper. Never got caught once either. Rigging a couple of high stakes poker nights didn’t go amiss either, especially when I gambled with a few of my forged bottles and not actual money so when I lost I wasn’t actually losing anything more than an hour or so of work, and not several grand.” Kit was smiling now, and Neal had to admit it was deviously simple and clever. Like the kid said, it wouldn’t have worked on anyone with a trained palate -- but a bunch of teenagers more concerned with status and inebriation than actual quality? Like shooting fish in a barrel. And rigging poker games, while a bit riskier, was also simple enough when you knew what you were doing.

“What about after you graduated? Like you said, the cons with the fake booze only worked so well because no one had the palate to know the difference.” 

“Well, I made it into UAL’s Camberwell College. Their bachelor’s in Fine Art: Painting program is extremely selective, and extremely helpful for learning how to forge things. Mom always said I took after you with my skill in painting, and I’ve always wondered if I had the skill to do some of the things you’ve done. Turns out I do, also turns out that heists are very hard and stressful to pull off and I hate them because I’m actually really horrible at making plans,” Kit chuckled here, clearly more relaxed now that he’d finished his glass of wine and realized Neal wasn’t going to be mad at him for pulling cons. Neal was also reminded that this was not the first glass of wine Kit had had today, and quickly hazarded a glance to the dining room table where, yup, there was a bottle of Merlot two thirds of the way gone from where Kit had been sipping at it before Neal came home. Explains the openness about fraud at least, though Neal could hardly blame him for pre-gaming a bit before meeting his father for the first time. 

“But anyways, first piece I actually forged and sold was my namesake. Mum always said you’d have appreciated my name sheerly for the fact that it was how you met.” Kit huffed out a laugh, “Christopher  _ Raphael  _ Ellis. I always just considered myself lucky that my first name wasn’t George.” 

Wait. 

“ _ You _ were the one to make the St. George and the Dragon that made its way onto the market last year? That was  _ you!?”  _ Neal had stood up from the couch now, incredulous, “I appraised that piece as a favor to my boss when it showed up in private collection in Marseille! I thought Mozzie had finally sold the  _ original _ I stole! _ ” _

He paused his pacing. 

“My son made a forgery so good it fooled the entire staff at the National Gallery of Art and _me_ _oh my god._” 

Kit was gaping at him. Neal was gaping at Kit. They burst into laughter, it was so ridiculous. Neal had wondered why Mozzie had sold the Raphael after so long, had almost been tempted to try and trace it back to his old friend who he hadn’t thought even knew where he’d hidden it. Neal had never even thought of selling it as long as Sara had been looking for it, knowing she wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to trace it back to him, and after he ‘died’, well, it wasn’t like he could just walk back into the Manhattan bolt hole he’d hidden it in. And it turned out, Mozzie hadn’t sold it at all because his son had  _ forged it. His son had forged it without even having the real painting to reference from.  _

* * *

_ _

They ended up spending the rest of the night talking about forgeries and heists and not only the crazy shit Neal had done back in the day but the stuff Kit had been trying his hand at too. Turns out the Raphael had only been the beginning for Kit, but like he’d said, heists were long and complicated to pull off so he’d decided to go back to forging missing pieces and silently slipping them into the underworld as the genuine article, occasionally having them pop up in circles legitimate art trade and panicking every single time they made the news. He’d only been caught out once so far, but had been good enough at burying his trail that it’d never made its way back to him. 

By the time they’d both finally fallen asleep late into the night (and more than one bottle of wine), Neal had been deeply impressed by the teenager (a teenager!! A  _ teenager _ that managed to fool Neal himself!!) and slightly worried. Even the best forgers got caught out eventually, especially ones daring enough to try big name pieces that were ever under scrutiny by the art world if not for suspicion of fraudulence then for academic curiosity. Kit admitted to only having made around half a dozen pieces so far, two safely away from prying eyes and suspicious authentication in smaller museums as a result of heists, one being the Raphael even Neal hadn’t been able to call out, and one other being the one that had already been tagged as a fake -- but the few pieces still in the winds of under the table art auctions and ever shifting occasionally renting out private galleries were subjects of decent worry. 

The reason most forgers worked to steal originals to sell was two-fold: firstly, it was easier to explain a heist to a fence than a mysterious discovery, and secondly, it greatly cut down on the amount of suspicion being cast at the forgery. The replaced piece had already been authenticated when it made its way to wherever it was being kept so there was generally no reason to have it authenticated again unless it was being sold or traded, and the original which was now being freshly sold and auctioned again would, of course, pass any method of authentication it was subjected to. Sure, the market was always full of well done fakes and imitations, that’s why things had to be authenticated in the first place, but usually those fakes were the products of heists which were now being sold, or of greater schemes than miraculously found lost treasures. Either way, they were generally much further removed from their forgers by either years or delicate planning than Kit’s pieces were. That’s not to say that Kit’s plans weren’t good ones, or that he hadn’t done a good job of hiding his trail as was evidenced by the piece that had been debunked already. But everyone makes mistakes eventually, Neal had learned that the hard way on more than one occasion. And even as skilled as he was - Kit was a nineteen year old art student, not a master forger and con man. Enthusiasm and talent could only make up for so much lack of experience especially without a teacher to show him the best ways of doing things. 

So, over breakfast, Neal did the only logical thing when faced with a son in need of guidance in the art of, well, art theft. 

“What would you think of pulling a heist together?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who drank like 9 shots of espresso and wrote all of chapter two and half of chapter 3 when he should have been sleeping! This idiot! Hope y'all enjoyed the fruits of my caffeine haze! 
> 
> Also - understand that I know absolutely nothing about art, hacking/programming, black market art trade, or the dark web and wrote this with hopes for your suspension of disbelief. I'm always open to suggestions, corrections, and constructive criticisms but please do not comment solely about the fact that I have gaps in my knowledge. I already know.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I can't make any promises about a timely update for the next chapter, but there will be one! Until then, I love comments and kudos and hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it! 
> 
> I'm also in the business for a beta if anyone is interested, you can find out how to contact me in my profile :)


End file.
